Irons in the Fire (7 page)

"And Caladhria stagnates peacefully as a consequence," Eclan said with some impatience. "Didn't Lescar's dukes like that idea?"

"How can you not know this?" Tathrin demanded with sudden anger. "Every mentor insists new pupils attend the elementary history lectures."

"I was never admitted to the university," retorted Eclan. "I never applied. My father would have thrashed me for wasting my time and his money."

The pony cart rattled over the cobbles. Eclan turned the pony's head to take a left-hand fork and a right-hand turn after that. They reached a crossroads where a brewer's dray was unloading barrels into an inn's cellars. Wagons and carriages waited to pass by on the other side of the road. The pony snorted with a jingle of its brass harness ornaments.

Tathrin wasn't sure if anger or embarrassment coloured Eclan's angular cheekbones. "What's your father's trade?" he asked tentatively.

"Leather." Eclan flicked the cart whip idly at a wisp of straw blowing past. "He owns one of the biggest tanneries down by the lake. He shares business interests with harness-makers and shoemakers, glovers and such. The only time he ever left Vanam was to cross the lake to Wrede when my grandsire proposed a match with one of his trading partners' families. He had the pick of all their daughters and my mother suited him best. Happily they proved well matched." Eclan smiled with genuine affection for his parents.

"My older brothers will take over his interests here, so I've been set to learn all I can from Master Wyess about trading more widely." He snapped the braided lash over the pony's ears as a gap opened up ahead. "What does your father do, that he can spare the coin for you to study mathematics?"

"He's an innkeeper in Carluse," replied Tathrin.

Eclan jerked at the reins, surprised. "A tapster?"

"He owns a coaching inn on the Great West Road, just before Losand," Tathrin corrected him. "Merchants warehouse goods with us sometimes, for purchasers to collect. We help if they need to hire guards or trade horses. One of my sisters married a blacksmith who set up his forge there." And of course, there was the money-changing his father did in defiance of Duke Garnot's edict.

Eclan encouraged the pony into a brisker walk. "So there's plenty of coin to be made."

Tathrin shook his head. "I earned my board and lodging in the upper town as a servant for richer students."

That did surprise Eclan. "It was worth it? For a ring to seal your documents with the proof that you're a scholar?"

"It was," Tathrin said firmly.

His father would have paid ten times as much to see him safely away, after those dreadful days when Duke Moncan of Sharlac had sent his mercenaries into Carluse, carrying slaughter to the very walls of Losand. The carts had been loaded with all they could bear and Tathrin's family had made ready to flee, waiting for word of the battle's outcome. His father had paced the hall, spade in hand, ready to dig up the gold he had buried in the cellar.

Unable to stand not knowing, against all his father's wishes, Tathrin had saddled a horse and set out for Losand. Riding only as far as the nearest market town, he'd nearly blundered into a detachment of mercenaries who'd abandoned the main battle in search of easier prey. Seeing the slaughtered bodies of men and boys whom he'd known all his life, he'd realised how close he'd come to death through his own arrogant folly.

Not knowing might have been better than never forgetting. Tathrin looked down to see he was gripping his father's box of weights so tightly that his knuckles showed white beneath his skin.

"So why isn't Lescar as dull as Caladhria?" Eclan prompted as they turned uphill away from the lake.

Tathrin forced his thoughts back to ancient history. It might stop him recalling recent horrors. "You know the princes of Tormalin choose their Emperor from amongst their own number?"

"I've never understood that," Eclan said frankly.

"Tormalin's princes all rule vast holdings. Tens of thousands of men and women are sworn to each noble family. The yearly trade that any noble house controls could equal that of Vanam." Tathrin united the hills and buildings ahead with a sweep of his hand. "So any quarrel between two noble houses could soon turn into all-out warfare. They have the men and the coin to raise armies as quick as they like." He snapped his fingers.

"That's why the Princes' Convocation chooses an Emperor to preside over the law courts and the lawmakers. Everyone is charged with protecting the greater good from individual ambition, and bound with sacred oaths. As long as whichever family holds the Imperial throne proposes talented successors, the other princes confirm them. If an Emperor stumbles too often, some other noble family will present their own candidate. Every so often the princes decide it's time for a change of dynasty."

"And all this ensures peace and harmony?" scoffed Eclan.

Tathrin grinned. "There are untimely deaths and convenient accidents and no end of negotiations over land and marriage settlements, but the princes know that cooperation serves their own best interests." His smile faded. "They still remember how their ancestors were fool enough to allow Nemith the Last to claim the throne because every wiser man was busy quarrelling with his rivals. Until Nemith brought the Old Empire crashing down into the Age of Chaos."

"And the Lescari liked chaos so much they've cherished it ever since?" Eclan teased.

"Ancient Tormalin rule over Lescar was different." Tathrin tried to stifle his irritation, but it still coloured his tone.

"I didn't mean to speak out of turn," Eclan said slowly. "I'm just curious."

They drew to a halt outside the imposing severity of the Excise Hall.

"Are you two going to sit chewing your cheeks all day?" A man in Excise Hall livery glared at them.

"We're here to get our weights certified." Jumping down from his seat, Eclan used his fingers to blow a piercing whistle. Three urchins idly picking through litter beside a public fountain came racing up the street.

Eclan held up a silver quarter-mark and each boy's eyes fixed on it. "Water the pony and keep your pals off the cart and there's one of these for each of you when we come back."

"Aye." The tallest of the three spat into a grimy palm and held out his hand.

Eclan spat and shook on it without flinching. Tathrin didn't think he could have done the same.

"Right, let's get these weights certified."

They carried the heavy chest through the arch into the Excise Hall's forecourt. There was already a long line of people waiting to be summoned before the assessors.

Tathrin saw a close knot of short, stocky men with flaxen hair and guarded expressions wearing high-collared tunics. "Mountain Men?" he queried.

"It's not just Lescari tapsters who value a properly certified set of weights." Eclan lowered his end of the chest. As Tathrin did the same, Eclan sat on it and looked up expectantly. "So what happened when the Tormalin legions of the Old Empire first invaded Lescar?"

"Move up." Eclan shifted and Tathrin sat beside him. "They conquered the local lords and divided Lescar into six provinces. Each province had a governor who answered to the Emperor. All revenues were sequestered for the use of the armies and the administration of justice wherever Imperial writ ran. So Lescari coin financed the conquest of Caladhria and Tormalin ventures into Dalasor and Gidesta. The governors all competed to earn Imperial favour by increasing revenues, and some say that's how the rivalries first started." He tried to keep his tone level.

"And when the Old Empire fell?" Eclan was watching the line moving slowly through the door to the assessors.

"Each of the governors did his best to hold his province together, assuming the Emperor's writ would soon be re-established. Different claimants to the Tormalin throne offered them whatever coin they could scrape together to win their support. By the end of the Chaos the governors were calling themselves dukes and taking up arms against each other, claiming they had the Tormalin Emperor's sanction to rule the rest as High King. Each still believes his line has the truest claim to that throne. Each one bequeaths the insanity to his children." Tathrin couldn't hide his bitterness. "Since the Chaos, when the Tormalin princes whose lands run up to the River Asilor started thinking the grass looked greener on the opposite bank, other noble families didn't want them expanding their holdings. So they agreed that only the Emperors would wage any warfare outside ancestral Tormalin lands. Hence, the Lescari dukes have been left to their own disastrous devices ever since."

"No one's ever won?" Eclan stood up and they dragged the chest a few paces forward. "In twenty generations?"

"Kycir of Marlier, ten generations ago, he fought everyone else to a standstill." Tathrin sat down again with a sigh. "He ruled Lescar until he died in a duel defending his wife's honour. When they went to tell her, they found her in bed with his brother."

Eclan laughed. "I'm sorry, but it is funny."

"It's a fair example of the honour and insight of our noble rulers," Tathrin said sardonically.

"No wonder anyone who can get the gold together leaves," Eclan said dismissively. "Oh, look, they're waving us in."

Tathrin picked up his end of the chest and helped carry it into the hall. Eclan had clearly lost interest in Lescar's endless tragedy. Perhaps that wasn't surprising. Put so simply, it did sound trite.

The interior was deeply shadowed after the bright sunlight outside. As his eyes adjusted, Tathrin saw a long row of tables. An excise clerk sat at each one with a set of scales and precisely graded weights engraved with the ornate seal of the Excise Hall. Behind, officials walked to and fro, collecting any weights that failed to pass muster. Men in heavy leather aprons stood beside black anvils, and the hall rang with the strike of their hammers and chisels. Confiscated and defaced, unfit weights were tossed into baskets for melting down.

Raeponin, god of justice and balance, gazed down from the painted wall, robed in blue and hooded in white. Stern and implacable, he held up his scales with one hand, his bell ready in the other to ring out over the forsworn, the deceitful and all those irretrievably abandoned to self-indulgent vice. To his right, the virtuous were bathed in sunlight and surrounded by plenty. To the left, the dishonest and immoral grovelled beneath the shadow of the god's displeasure.

Tathrin held his father's box tight. Without the weights, no merchant would trust his father to change his coinage.

"We're from Master Wyess's counting-house." When their turn came, Eclan began taking out the leather bags holding each graduated set of weights.

"Copper penny, bronze penny, silver penny, silver mark, gold mark." The excise clerk counted each one off as he tested them with deft fingers. His eyes barely shifted from the central needle of his scales. "All true." He looked up as he swept the last ones back into their pouch. "Are those for certifying?"

"If you please." Tathrin handed over his father's box. He saw sweat from his fingers marring the glossy wood. Was it possible the weights could somehow have become unreliable?

The excise man examined each one. "An heirloom set?" He looked up, mildly curious. "I can't recall when I last saw weights so old."

"Handed down from my grandsire, and his sire before him," Tathrin explained.

"They're still weighing true." The man handed the box back. "Swear by Raeponin's bell and balance that all these weights will be used in fair and equitable trade, may the gods bring all deceivers to ruin."

"We swear. Talagrin take all oath-breakers." Eclan was gathering up all the counting-house weights.

"I swear," Tathrin echoed. "Raeponin rend me if I lie."

"Get all your certificates sealed over there."

The clerk was already looking past them as another merchant's apprentice unbuckled a leather-bound coffer. They joined the next line.

"I need to send these back to my father. Do we have any other duties today?" Tathrin asked.

"As soon as we get these safely back to the counting-house, our time's our own. Pay the extra and use the Imperial Tormalin courier," Eclan advised. "There isn't a bandit between the Great Forest and the Ocean who dares attack their coaches."

"I'm going to buy some ribbons and lace for my mother and sisters." Tathrin did his best to sound offhand. "I might buy some wine for my father. Where's Master Gruit's storehouse?"

"Halfway up the Ariborne, past the Mercers' Bridge." Eclan collected the freshly sealed certificates that the second clerk was shoving at him.

Eclan's confidence in the urchins hadn't been misplaced. Reclaiming the pony cart, they retraced their route. Though the day was considerably busier, the carts and carriages were all moving swiftly enough.

"Me and some of the others are heading for The Looking Glass this evening." Eclan pulled the pony up by Master Wyess's entrance. "There's a troupe of players come all the way from Toremal to give us
The Chatelaine's Folly
. They're bound to have pretty dancing girls showing plenty of leg."

"That sounds good." Tathrin had only managed a few visits to Vanam's acclaimed playhouse. Each time, he'd found imagined worlds of passion and challenge where he could forget his own trials and secrets, if only for a little while.

"We're meeting at the cheese market at the bottom of the Bairen at the second hour of the night." Eclan grinned. "If you're not there, I'll assume some lacemaker made you a better offer."